Lakshmana Returns Again and Again to the Mother Whose Shame Will Not Leave
Uttara Kanda, Doha 6
Doha 6 · Movement 3 of 3
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Sumitra embraces Lakshmana knowing the depth of his love for Rama's feet. She receives not only the son who left but the service through which he made every hardship of exile his own.
Rama meets Kaikeyi, and shame contracts within her heart. His safe return has not erased the memory of the demand that sent him away, and the mother cannot yet enter joy as freely as the others.
Lakshmana receives blessings from every mother, then returns to Kaikeyi again and again. The brother who endured the forest because of her words does not preserve grievance as his right. He works hardest to loosen the remorse of the one most unable to forgive herself. Her agitation remains, so his tenderness repeats. Family dharma becomes the refusal to let another remain imprisoned inside the past when love can cross the room once more.
Lakshmana answers fourteen years of consequence by returning to Kaikeyi until mercy becomes more persistent than her shame.
Read the passage from the Manas
भेटेउ तनय सुमित्राँ राम चरन रति जानि। रामहि मिलत कैकेई हृदयँ बहुत सकुचानि।।6(क)।। लछिमन सब मातन्ह मिलि हरषे आसिष पाइ। कैकेइ कहँ पुनि पुनि मिले मन कर छोभु न जाइ।।6।।
Sumitra embraced her son Lakshmana, knowing his deep devotion to Rama's feet. When Rama met Kaikeyi, she shrank with shame in her heart. Lakshmana met all the mothers and received their blessings with joy. But to Kaikeyi he went again and again, for the remorse in her heart would not leave.